Word: amaterasu
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...Japan's renewed sense of identity has also stoked a spiritual rediscovery. Under Shinto, the country's native religion, which blends a reverence for nature with Japan's founding myths, the Japanese Emperor is considered the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu; it was in Emperor Hirohito's sacred name that Japanese soldiers fought in World War II. When a battle-vanquished Hirohito announced in 1946 that he was not, in fact, a god in human form, some Japanese distanced themselves from the animist tradition. While shrines remained and festivals continued, Shinto was initially condemned by the occupying Americans...
...gray felt baseball cap. "They've got female royalty in England. Why can't we?" Itoh nodded. "It's not like it would be something new," he says. Indeed, there were eight Empresses before Akihito, the 125th monarch in a line that mythologically, anyway, descends from the sun goddess Amaterasu, the supreme deity of Shintoism. "It's ridiculous we outlaw them...
...than four hours after his father's death, Akihito, 55, received the imperial and state seals and replicas of two of the imperial treasures that symbolize the throne. By legend, the actual treasures -- a mirror, a sword and a crescent-shaped jewel -- trace back to the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu. The government chose a name for Emperor Akihito's reign: Heisei, the achievement of complete peace on earth and in the heavens...
...take a personal part in opening the rice-planting season. Come fall, the monarch will return to the same paddy in the imperial palace compound and harvest a crop of about 300 lbs., part of it destined for the Ise Grand Shrines as an offering to the sun goddess Amaterasu...
...futility of the war, even before the atomic bombs dropped in 1945. After the nuclear ultimatum, he counseled his people to "bear the unbearable" (surrender, that is). At the Allies' request, he publicly disowned the official myth that he was the divine descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, and he did not murmur when the conquerors stripped him of his $100 million fortune. When his people struggled against starvation early in the Occupation, he gave away American canned goods to old retainers and subsisted on brown rice and sweet potatoes...